


Of Stargazing and Pizza and Pumpkins

by ponderinfrustration



Series: Tender Increments [4]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autumn, F/M, Fluff, Halloween, Kissing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 19:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: Erik and Christine, and snapshots of the days leading up to their first Halloween together





	Of Stargazing and Pizza and Pumpkins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @a-partofthenarrative's PotO 13 Nights of Halloween over on Tumblr, and posted here on the occasion of the anniversary of my birth

His memories of last Halloween are vague and mostly amount to tiredness. He was worn out from the first six weeks of lectures, and fully intended to rest when reading week came, but was compelled to go to John Henry’s annual showing of _Tombstone, _complete with pizza and cheap wine from Aldi, and two days later he had a flu that threatened to become a chest infection, so the whole thing was decidedly miserable. He mostly remembers the fireworks out his window, off in the far distance as he attempted to sleep, and Nadir, stumbling in sometime in the small hours, with a box of chocolates for him and a naggin of whiskey.

Every fibre of him ached, and he could easily have slept for a week.

This year is already shaping up to be different.

For one thing, he has gotten the flu vaccine, just to be safe. For another, John Henry has promised decent wine at the _Tombstone _showing. Decent wine makes a whole host of things more tolerable.

The best part is that he has Christine, and he could never have expected her.

She makes the whole world better.

How has it only been seven months? Seven months since he’s known her, seven months since he’s loved her. It’s as if they’ve always known each other, as if that lurching in his heart on the day they met was a whisper of recognition, some part of his soul that caught and said _yes. Yes this is her, the one you’ve been missing, the other part of your soul._

She’s turned him into an awful poet.

(There could be worse fates.)

Reading week comes, anyway, as it always does at the end of October. He has been minding himself better this year, not least thanks to her, and he is not worn to the bone though he does feel he could sleep for about two days. Sleep seems like such a terrible waste of time, when they have nine days (nine days!), and have both gotten themselves in order enough that they don’t need to do any work.

Nine days that he can spend with her. It sounds so much a luxury.

And to sleep through some of that—well, she’s exhausted too, he supposes. The sleeping need not be apart.

(He sleeps so much better with her in his bed. Or with her in her bed.)

They honour John Henry by attending his annual showing of _Tombstone _after lectures finish on the Friday. Erik sips his wine (definitely an improvement on last year, not so much like paint stripper), and lies on the couch and dozes with his head in Christine’s lap, her fingers gentle in his hair. He sleeps through most of it, drifts awake in time to see Val Kilmer being shockingly attractive with a red waistcoat (“I’m your huckleberry,” and if Erik had been a lesser man, if he had been more like John Henry, he would have been weak for that man and as it is his heart falters, and Christine clearly feels it, her hand at his throat, fingers gentle, because she snorts and smiles down at him, and he closes his eyes again, grinning), and John Henry doesn’t notice because John Henry is enthralled by what’s on the screen never mind he must have seen it 500 times by now, leaning into Morgan and Kate lying with her head in his lap.

They have not spoken, properly, about their costumes for Halloween night, but Erik _assumes _Doc Holliday is on the agenda again.

He hasn’t much considered what he will dress as himself, but half-thinks he might dust-off his Remus Lupin outfit. Christine has complimented his general frayed teacher look in the past – she does it no matter how many times he insists he’s not a teacher but an _academic_ as she well knows – and wearing a minimum of makeup makes it look as if his distorted face is really scarred, not fissured and cracked. Of all the costumes he has ever selected for Halloween, Remus Lupin is an old favourite.

But there are still five days to go to Halloween – well, four intervening and then the day itself. Neither he nor Nadir have ever done much to decorate for the occasion, but they do like to hang a few false spiders and webs around the door. Simple, but effective.

This year they decide to do a little more. Bob the Spider (an old and trusted friend in the Halloween decoration stakes) is installed in his old home above the door. His dear beloved webs are placed around the door itself. There are no less than three stickers of ghosts on the windows. A new friend this year, Georgina the Skeleton, is dangled down in front of the kitchen window, limbs suitably akimbo. A can of sprayable snow gives several windows the impression of mist. It’s a little more than last year, but Christine nods approvingly to see it, then cants her head and says, “Perhaps an axe?”

His lady has a hidden gruesome side she has never revealed to him before. The extent of her decoration with Lilly is a concession to pumpkins (four of them, called “the family” purchased and ready but not yet carved on the grounds they will last better carved closer to the day). He and Nadir have yet to acquire pumpkins.

He adds them to the list, and adds a child’s false axe to the window ensemble, blade covered in false blood.

It looks shockingly real.

Thus ends 27 October.

He sleeps soundly the sleep of the dead, Christine in his arms, her breath warm against his neck.

28 October dawns crisp and clear. He sees it when he has to extract himself from Christine’s arms to go to the loo, and stands in the frosty chill on his way back to bed, gazing out the window at the sky, the watery brightness along the horizon, the black impressions of distant birds emerging from the trees in flight. It is to be a bright day, and a cold one, but beautiful, so beautiful, the tendrils of mist hovering above the ground, the leaves crisped gold and bronze and carpeting the grass as they glow on the trees. Perhaps a walk down Carton lane is in order, the chill smell of autumn in the air. He can feel it in his bones, Christine’s fingers interlinked with his, her bright smile and shining eyes, feel it in his bones and he has a sudden desire to set his fingers to piano keys, a sudden desire to kiss her.

He is too tired to compose, too tired and too cold and she is in his bed, curled on her side, golden hair fanned over her face, and he pads back to bed, and slips beneath the covers, shivering at the heat on his chilled skin and takes her back into his arms.

Back into his arms, and sighs, and closes his eyes.

* * *

The evening of 28 October finds him and Christine sitting on the bench overlooking the canal, a pizza propped on his knees and a bottle of red wine (Apothic Red, semi-expensive at €15) balanced between her knees. It is a picnic, but they are also, in fact, hiding on John Henry, who would have Erik dress up as a _cowboy _of all things, and Christine as a lady of ill-repute. Never mind it is Halloween that is coming, not the staging of a play of suspect quality written by John Henry himself (it has been three years since the play in question, Christine had not yet come to exist in his world, and _that _whole theatrical monstrosity is an experience that Erik has no desire to ever repeat, thank you very much.) And so they are hiding.

It is not too late to decamp to Sligo for a few days, just until the festivities have passed.

It is not too late to fake their own deaths.

(Sounds just a bit dramatic though.)

Hiding is certainly the best option, for the time being. Even with the chill of frost threatening to settle into his bones, the heat of the pizza burning through the box and his jeans so that his thighs are oddly hot, the heat of his fingers twined with hers, a point of contact that focuses his attention. The tip of her nose is faintly pink, eyes shining blue, hair bundled up under her woolly hat.

God but she’s beautiful.

There is still half the pizza to go, the pepperoni tangy on his tongue, the cheese creamy, and the wine is a headiness in his throat.

He leans in, and as his lips brush hers, she smiles.

Before them, the water burns gold in the setting sun.

* * *

29 October, and there is mist.

John Henry has abandoned the pursuit of them as part of Operation Western (thank God for small mercies.)

It is Christine’s idea to go for a walk, no destination in mind. They buy a bag of peanuts and a bottle of Kopparberg in Dunnes Stores. He is uncertain of the wisdom of mixing nuts with Swedish fruit cider – fancy ciders have historically given him heartburn, and it is distinctly unpleasant. But it is autumn, it is almost Halloween, and if he can’t trust the Swedish fruit cider now then when can he trust it?

So they walk with their alcohol and peanuts and no destination in sight. Just to go, to _be_, their fingerless gloves and fingers entwined. Maybe he’s spent too much time on Pinterest, but if he squints it conjures a moodboard behind his eyes – all turning leaves in shades of gold and bronze, mist gathering around black boots, skinny jeans and checked shirts and knitted jumper and long jackets, the sideways cant of a head and faintly knowing smile, dew-damp apples in long grass though the apples are all gone now, and the remembered bitterness of latte on lips.

Maybe he’s becoming too much of a romantic, or Romantic, maybe it’s too many pre-reading week rushed assignments, but it’s autumn and it’s misty and they’ve elected to trust the fruit cider and her hand is in his, and it’s been a great season for the blackberries, and is that a good or a bad sign?

He decides he doesn’t much care, decides it doesn’t much matter, not when they are framed in the turning leaves of Carton lane and he wishes suddenly, furiously, for Nadir and his camera to capture them, to capture this, and keep the image forever.

If he were an artist he might paint it from memory. But he is a musician, and Halloween might be around the corner but October is the season of love and lightness even above spooky ghosts in windows.

“Erik,” her voice is soft, her fingers tightening in his, disturbing his ruminations, and he turns to her, there in the mist among the trees and feels she is the queen of the fae who has stolen his soul, as she smiles at him, and he smiles back as her fingers gently cup the back of his neck and draw him down, down, and her kiss is gentle, and sweet, and that’s October too.

Her tongue nudges his lips apart, and he ceases his thinking.

* * *

It is a clear night, that night, and there are pumpkins waiting to be carved and Apothic Red wine to be drank, and _Prisoner of Azkaban _to be watched as both of those activities take place but Nadir is off with the latest woman of his affections and John Henry and Kate and Morgan are nowhere to be found, and Lilly took one look at he and Christine and declared cocoa was in order and so they are sitting outside in her garden, just he and Christine on the bench beneath two blankets and cuddled close with their mugs of cocoa, music tinkling to them slow from inside (something Swedish that he doesn’t know, but it’s soft and sweet, and reminds him of Christine even as she is in his arms), and they cuddle close and kiss and look at the stars, stretching on and on and on. The same stars as ever, the same ones his parents shared, the same ones Al taught him, and now he can share them with Christine and isn’t that wonderful?

Isn’t that the most wonderful thing in the world?

* * *

They devote the next day to pumpkin carving.

John Henry and Morgan deputise themselves to the “necessary work” of buying sweets for the next evening’s trick or treaters, and disappear to the array of cheap shops up in Dublin. (Erik rather suspects there will be as much alcohol purchased as sweets, but no matter. Whiskey never does go astray, even if he only ever has a little of it himself.) Nadir actually has to work, and leaves that morning with admonishments for them to not get into any trouble. With Kate in the kitchen making soup of the pumpkin innards, trouble is quite unlikely to occur. Mostly.

Christine does steal several kisses, between drawing designs onto the pumpkin faces.

_Prisoner of Azkaban _is the first port of call, a solid pre-Halloween tradition and with the wine measured in skull-shaped shot glasses they are good to go.

The pumpkins are to have a wide variety of faces – a grinning face, an angry face, a scarred-up face. Christine is no artist but she is more of an artist than he is, so one of them gains a cat face and another somewhat resembles a vampire.

A vampire might be a good costume for him, next year. He is certainly gaunt enough, has a small collection of shirts and suits, and a little makeup would attend to the paleness. Christine could be his undead bride, if she is not too busy in Coimbra.

(There is a chance this might be their first and last Halloween for several years, but he tries not to dwell on it.)

The vampire is a distinct possibility, and he files it away for future reference.

Though he is not of an artistic mind, he does take possession of one pumpkin and traces their initials onto it. Soppy, yes, but it fills his heart with glee to see the E and C interlinked.

He knocks back a shot of wine for his efforts.

In the interest of delegation, and protecting his very valuable hands at all costs, Christine is the knife operator. Scooping falls to him, and he has several big bowls to hand and a big metal spoon. Kate in the kitchen is already in action chopping carrots and turnips, and has decided to carve a face into one of the turnips, to tease John Henry.

“I’m calling him Doc,” she said, with a mischievous grin, and Erik snorted with laughter.

They settle into their roles easily – Kate boiling and peeling and chopping and untangling the ropes and ropes of seeds that the pumpkins give up, him scooping, and Christine cutting and carving and it stirs something deep within to see his girlfriend, his sweet innocent girlfriend, wielding big knives and small knives and every sort of knife and stopping to sharpen them and then inspect the newly-keen blades. The mass murdering terror of the pumpkins, her hair tied back with a blue bandana, a bat earring dangling from one ear, her face stern and severe until she catches his eye and grins and shatters the illusion.

God but how he loves her.

She is more distracting, even, than _Prisoner of Azkaban_, and considering his ancient fondness for Remus Lupin that is saying something. He finishes cleaning out his third pumpkin (and drains his fourth shot of wine) when Harry casts the stag Patronus to frighten the Dementors away. True they stopped for the first sampling of soup (delicious) but he really ought to be further on.

Clearly they are going to need music.

He settles for The Decemberists, _The Hazards of Love _and _Florasongs _and of course ‘Red Right Ankle’, most important of all. He supposes he could always dress as William the faun some year, and Christine as dear beloved Margaret. A bit of a notion maybe, but a fun one to entertain.

Last year, before Christine came into his life, he and the boys went as the Traveling Wilburys – he was George Harrison, leather jacket and big hair and all; Nadir was Bob Dylan, cultivating a look of faint disdain, and Morgan made a very fine Jeff Lynne, casually lanky and broad in form-fitting jeans. And of course John Henry was Tom Petty – his hair has been blond now anyway for nearly three years, a very specific shade of ash-blond, and such is his love for Doc Holliday that he does a very fine Southern drawl. They made an excellent quartet, never mind Erik himself is the only one who can hold a note.

Though it’s arguable if Bob Dylan ever really holds a note.

The Decemberists prove far less distracting than _Prisoner of Azkaban _was, though he does find himself repeatedly closing his eyes and swaying with the music. Every time he finishes a pumpkin and passes it to Christine to attend to the facial details she kisses him and giggles into his mouth he steals several more kisses in between.

The last pumpkin done, he swings her into his arms and half-sings half-croons “This is the story of your red right ankle” into her ear. She kisses his cheek, and swats him, and they stumble back to the couch and that’s where Kate finds them, gasping into each other’s mouths, when she comes to see why it’s taking so long for the pumpkin entrails to reach her.

(“Filthy children,” she mutters, collecting the last bowl, never mind she is just as bad whenever John Henry or Morgan or both of them are in attendance.)

‘Red Right Ankle’ (which Erik had set to play no less than four times) changes into ‘Rainy Night in Soho’, and their canoodling comes to an abrupt end as he pulls Christine back off the couch and into his arms to dance. Stumbling swaying dancing it is, but her head is against his chest, and his arms around her, and there are pumpkin seeds in her hair somehow and he kisses her forehead and pulls her closer and holds her, just holds her, as the music swirls around them, Shane MacGowan’s vocals yearning and earnest,

_Still there’s a light I hold before me_

_You're the measure of my dreams_

And tomorrow is Halloween, and Remus Lupin will kiss the Lady of Shalott before he opens the door with a bowl of jellies expecting to find a gaggle of tiny skeletons and vampires and werewolves but instead it will be a desperate wild-eyed Doc Holliday in a grey suit who’ll brush by him with a book in his hand (_Against the Tide _by Noël Browne) and ask “Christine have you _read this_?” and the Lady of Shalott will shake her head because Portuguese politics are her forte, not Irish ones, and just before Remus Lupin closes the door a harried-looking Old West madame and a broad US Marshal with a terrible false moustache will appear and ask “is he here?” the he being the historian-slash-consumptive dentist now regaling the Lady making “save me” eyes over at Remus Lupin and from the kitchen will come a bark of laughter from Sherlock Holmes to see his friends finally all gathered here, and eating the jellies that were reserved fro visiting children attempting to frighten them.

Afterwards, when the callers have stopped coming, they will decamp to the Roost and get famously drunk, and there Remus will dance with the Lady properly and by then they will be a little more Erik and a little more Christine, but so much for tomorrow night.

Tonight there is slow-dancing, and soup, and there will be jellies and whiskey when the boys get hime. And afterwards he will go out into the garden with Christine and hold her in his arms as they sway and look at the stars above and with their only light the lit candles in pumpkins casting a hazy glow they will kiss each other and hold each other close, as the clock ticks to midnight and past, and with the candles guttering low he will smile into her mouth and it will be the best Halloween he has ever known, so help him.

She strokes back a lock of his hair, and smiles, and his heart thuds.

Will be the best, and already perfect.

Already perfect.


End file.
